Monday, August 4, 2008

There's Only One of Me (thank goodness)

My dear husband, who spends as much time on the internet as I do, showed me this really cool site called HowManyOfMe. Its fun because you can input your first and last name to find out how many people in the US have your same name. Interestingly enough, there are 1,524 people with the first name Denyse (spelled with a "y", thank you Daddy for making me unique). There are also 2,530 people with the same last name as me. I would have thought there would be more, but apparently my husband's family is primarily concentrated here in Northeast Texas so we are already acquainted with the majority of the people who share our last name. Now here is the interesting (or disturbing) thing: when you combine my first and last name, the result says "There are 1 or fewer people with the name Denyse B****" At first I was thankful to know that there are no other Denyse's parading around, going on crime sprees and getting their (my) name in the local police blotter only to cause me untold embarrassment due to mistaken identity. Then the "or fewer" part dawned on me. What's that supposed to mean? I'm obviously here, so how could there be fewer than one of me? Am I not valuable enough to really be considered 1 full person? Am I a figment of my own imagination? Wouldn't that make me "1 plus 1 crazy alter ego"? But seriously, 1 or fewer? Now I'm having 1 major identity crisis!